Tag Archives: God

“And what ruled do you think I walked by? Truly a strange one, but the best in the whole world. I was guided by an implicit faith in God’s common things. For thus I thought within myself: God being, as generally believed, infinite in goodness, it is most consonant and agreeable with His nature that the best things should be most common.”

—Thomas Traherne, quoted in “Words to Live By” by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press

“Let us be like a bird for a moment perched
On a frail branch when he sings;
Though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song,
Knowing that he has wings.”

-Victor Hugo

The group, Libana, sings a round based on Victor Hugo’s words. You can hear it in at CD Baby. This makes a good repetitive chant to sing. I have a group meeting at my home . Sometimes we sing this.

“A bird sits on the dry twig of a tree and eats a piece of fruit it has found somewhere. It knows that the twig may break at any moment; so it is very alert as it sits on the twig. You should understand that this world is like that. Everything may be lost at any moment. You should remember that, children. Be sure to hold on to the truth that only God is everlasting. Then there will be no reason for sorrow

When I was at the beach one day, I wanted to make a visual and kinesthetic prayer. So I composed a prayer in my mind. Got a stick. Got my feet wet. Wrote my prayer. And smiled at the whole experience of the dissolving words. Even my footprints disappeared.

This is a smoke tree. The leaves are decorated with rainbows from the radiant spider webs. I had meant to focus on the spider web, but this is what happened, blurry spiderweb. It was totally accidental. I didn’t even notice the rainbows when I took the photo. There may have been a bit of dew on them. I was seeing something different. When I got home to look at the photo on the camera, I was delighted by the magic in it even if what I was focusing on was blurry.

Shortly after my husband died in 2003, I began to write for Amma’s Circle of Love Letters. I had received a few cards when my husband was ill. The writers assured me of their prayers, and shared positive quotes with me. I received much comfort. I decided to join the writing group since I benefited so much from it. At first I had a lot of reservation about writing, as I had never received good grades in English. So far, no one has complained about my sentence structures or grammar. The process of thinking of others helped pull me out of depression.